A place to discuss the characteristics of the cars in Formula One, both current as well as historical. Laptimes, driver worshipping and team chatter do not belong here.
smhasan7 wrote:
well today is the penultimate day of testing and the only thing we saw aero wise perhaps was the 'halo' joke.
so i guess this is what we're going to see in Melbourne. Nonetheless the time on softs was really encouraging. Would have wiped a few smirks off the Merc garage
the aero is not so old... Ferrari are sneakily adding little bits and pieces to the car...
Hear me out on this point...the diffuser produces at least half the downforce that an F1 car generates.
Ferrari has obviously redesigned their car to allow much more air passing over the diffuser which equates to more downforce with minimal drag.
those 2015 wings along with a diffuser that had much less airflow above it was 2 to 3 tenths slower than Mercedes in race pace last season. My point is why should there be a radical departure from front and rear wings when they obviously work?
because Mercedes is bolting on new noses and barge boards?
IMHO this season hinges on if Ferrari can match or surpass Mercedes when the time comes to use qualifying mode and if their engine in race mode can match Mercedes
Yeah, you're completely off on what you think diffuser brings in terms of downforce. The biggest gain you get from the rear wing. Second biggest from front wing. The rest is miniscule when it comes to pure downforce. Still, it is important when we're talking about lap times, and fiddling with it can bring decisive advantage, so in that way your observations may hold. Just don't go and tell any driver with broken wings that he still has more than half of his downforce left.
Still no new auro spec. on Ferrari. They still run old front wing and rear wing. Compare that with Mercedes and Mclaren.
Thanks for posting this bhall. Those images are from Willem Toet, former head of aero at Sauber. Later on in the article he stated that the floor was producing an even higher percentage of the load on later year designs:
"This force distribution is for a car that is still young in terms of aerodynamic development – later, better designs allowed a further increase in the percentage of downforce created by the floor. The floor and the front wing are the “efficient” downforce generators typically on a Formula 1 car. When you improve overall efficiency often it is achieved by increasing the power of your more efficient devices. "
On the SF16-H Ferrari have concentrated their aero development on improving the floor/diffusor which as pointed out above is by far the most efficient producer of downforce. The short thumb nose and the tighter rear bodywork increase the flow both under and over the floor/diffusor leading to more downforce for less drag.
Also the current front wing design debuted late in 2015 (Austin?) and could well have been developed as part of the SF-16H aero program. It looks 'old' now because the chose to run it at the end of last year.
These are 2009 numbers with different, lower r-wing rules, and double diffusor. On top of that that data is very superficial since downforce and drag vary a lot with speed, and are really only important for high to medium speed corners, so to put its effect into numbers isn't a simply process. It should suffice to say that with wings you gain a tremendous downforce as you gain speed (very important for cornering), and gain a lot on drag as well (very bad for top speed). Diffusor/floor combo is much more economic in that aspect. Not as much downforce, but a lot less drag, so in perfect world with enough downforce from diffusor you'd start lowering rear wing, but that never happens with current rules on normal tracks, and everyone is running max allowed rear wing, a clear tale that shows what gives more downforce.
Willem Toet, Oct 28, 2015 wrote:This [2009] force distribution is for a car that is still young in terms of aerodynamic development – later, better designs allowed a further increase in the percentage of downforce created by the floor.
"It should suffice to say that with wings you gain a tremendous downforce as you gain speed"
Downforce from both the diffusor and the wings varies in proportion to the velocity squared. The percentage of downforce generated does not vary significantly with speed between the wings and the floor.
Lift = 1/2 * air density * lift coefficient * surface area * velocity * velocity, or (L = 0.5ClAV²)
Sector- and laptimes have absolutely no place here, unless you can somehow correlate them back to specific parts of the car. Posts about the halo concept are only relevant here if it discussed in terms of how it affects performance of the car (aerodynamically, cooling, weight, etc).
Other types of discussions about those topics not conforming the guidelines that got outline above, belong in the threads linked in the first paragraph.
Flanker27 wrote:Wille they introduce a new nose? This is one of the most ugly on the grid...
Who cares if it's ugly?
From an engineering point of view, if it works, it's also beautiful.
I would disagree on that one. Usually ugly things are not that good. And F1 is beatiful example of that. RBR is all the time sleek and sexy. And now just think about Lotus nose (they wouldn't use this solution if they were not sure they will gain advantage). Agly as --- and we can say it was horrible car.
Flanker27 wrote:Wille they introduce a new nose? This is one of the most ugly on the grid...
Who cares if it's ugly?
From an engineering point of view, if it works, it's also beautiful.
I would disagree on that one. Usually ugly things are not that good. And F1 is beatiful example of that. RBR is all the time sleek and sexy. And now just think about Lotus nose (they wouldn't use this solution if they were not sure they will gain advantage). Agly as --- and we can say it was horrible car.
We are really going off-topic, but I want to reply just to close this debate.
There's really no correlation between "beauty is good" and "ugliness is bad" or vice versa, from an engineering point of view.
Also, we are forgetting that everyone has his own subjective perception...
The impressions I had formed after the first three days are pretty much confirmed, meaning that Mercedes and Ferrari cars are the most complete, agile cornering 1/2, quick to change direction uphill to Turn 3, stable downloading the couple exit turn 4, excellent when cornering 5 and docile output, despite the performance engine of the lot. In curves 6/7 and 8 manage to have a great inclusion and not suffer oversteer on exit. In the third sector make the difference especially in curve 11, where they show a traction impossible for other.
I noticed that Rosberg an approach to the curves 4:06 opposite to Hamilton, that tends to drive the style of Ferrari, that leaves the machine slide towards the outside of the already input curve, to bring more speed at the center curve, and first open the gas, however, by lengthening the trajectory. Rosberg instead of sewing to the curb, runs much less road but must be dosed much more the accelerator during traction, even having the wheels during steering. At a guess, however it seems that the two styles at the end of the curve do not lead timekeeping differences.
A consideration on Seb's race simulation: I think it was not the limit, yesterday Kimi was pushing and it showed, he also did some long, Seb seemed to have a little 'margin.
Google translate. From comments at Leo Turrini's blog. Guy was at the testing this weekend and gave his observations.
